Last February there was a new kid in town, an event that brought people new to technology together with the geeks to learn from one another. NewBCamp returns this February with a year's worth of word of mouth publicity behind it. NewBCamp is the little "unconference"  that could.  This time around there is a brand new website at NewBCamp.com, a labor of love built on the django framework by Adam Tucker, Andrew Shearer, and myself.  The site is powered by a wiki-style engine that enables users to create pages, make comments, and add their own presentation to the event schedule.  There is also plenty of content from last year available on the site, featuring links to images and articles contributed by such noteworthies as Christopher S. Penn of PodCamp, Daniel Barbarisi of the Providence Journal, Pamela O'Hara of BatchBlue, and others, as well as the now iconic photo of Matthew Ebel wearing the NewBCamp T-shirt - on his head. 

This year NewBCamp has taken on a new identity as well.  Free Geek Providence, a non-profit organized by Nathan Hutnak to "help the needy get nerdy", has adopted NewBCamp as its own in order to promote the growth of the event to schools beyond the flagship NewBCamp organized by the student technology club SofT ICE at Johnson & Wales University.  With the anticipated growth of Free Geek, the continued support of Providence Geeks, and the generous contributions of time, interest and knowledge of the participants themselves, NewBCamp will again be an opportunity for all of us to make technology that much more accessible to the needy, newbies, and nerds alike.

Have a computer you're thinking of replacing?  Free Geek RI (fgri.org) is a nonprofit that accepts donations of used monitors, laptops, desktops, and various other hardware.  Look them up on twitter @freegeekpvd

Sara Streeter is a continuing education student at Johnson & Wales University and an executive officer of the SofT ICE. She is also a lead organizer of NewBCamp which will take place this Saturday, February 23, 2008 from 9am to 4pm in the Xavier Building on the Johnson & Wales campus in Downtown Providence. You can get more info and register here .

While the idea for NewBCamp was based on the experience of attending BarCamp back in March of last year, it only started to come together when I attended PodCamp in October. BarCamp being all about geek topics and really for geeks, when I went I was surrounded by the people that made coding and web development their life's work. I would ask questions that were basic, because I was still learning (and still consider myself to be learning), repeatedly saying "I'm new to PHP" or "I'm new to Javascript." Finally one fellow audience member who had heard me asked me if there was anything that wasn't new to me. The assumption was that if I was at BarCamp, I already had to be at a certain level of experience.

This feeling of being excluded because I was a beginner stayed with me, and I began to wish there was an unconference for me and people like me. It would have undoubtedly stayed just a feeling and a wish if I hadn't attended PodCamp a few months later. First of all, I met Joe Cascio at a Providence Geeks Dinner, and he was the one to motivate me to connect with the social media crowd on Twitter. When I showed up at PodCamp, I was a little lost until I saw Joe again sitting with a group of people - I remember in particular Jeff Glasson, Nik Butler, and Jack Hodgson. I joined up with them and all of a sudden had some "peeps," as Joe likes to call them. I went ahead and told them my idea of having an unconference for beginners, and jokingly said it would be fun to call it Newbie Camp (I being a newbie myself didn't realize that there is another spelling of that word which is a bit derogatory - the noob). Not only did Joe and company like the idea, they started picking out people around the room who could help me accomplish it, and walked me up to those people - among them Chris Brogan, co-founder of PodCamp, along with Chris Penn - to talk about my idea. With not even a business card to hand out, I gave everybody I met handcrafted Post-its I had brought along with my contact info. They were all very encouraging, but more than that, I had told people - a lot of people - about my idea, so now I had to actually do it. And the rest is history.

What if you had the chance to have a conversation that resolved a nagging computer problem you’ve been having for a week now? Or helped you discover a website which expands your network and promotes your business at the same time? And don’t forget the three minute tutorial on new software you’ve been too busy to figure out.

On Saturday, February 23, 2008, the SofT ICE club at Johnson & Wales is hosting NewBCamp, an “unconference” for the rest of us. Rather than a "conference," in which the communication is too often only one-way, an “unconference” is based around the idea that an event brings people together that have something to talk about with each other.

NewBCamp will feature break-out sessions based around an informal, conversational format and focus on four tracks – Marketing, Podcasting/Blogging, New Social Media, and Web Development. This event is open to both students and the general public. We are also actively seeking presenters and participants!

For more information or to get involved, visit our website.

All new event in the community coming up at Xavier building (Johnson & Wales University). This technology unconference is for both the public and students who may be new to technology and are active self learners. It will take place from 9:00 am-4:00pm on Saturday, February 23 as listed on the RI NEXUS calendar. Registration info is on our newbcamp.com site.

Interested event presenters are also welcome to register! You may list your preferred times on our Presentations Page immediately following your eventbrite registration at http://newbcamp08.eventbrite.c...

This may be the start of a beautiful friendship. SofT ICE (the School of Technology Industry Career Explorers) group at JWU is all about networking with other techies in RI - and RI Nexus is all about getting the Talent matched with the Business. Our goal for the coming academic year is to develop collaborative relationships with RI businesses through monthly speaker events, a weekend-long Unconference (see BarCamp Providence-style), and a mentoring program in which students connect with industry professionals in an informal setting. My personal goal is to record our progress via RI Nexus and to attract support in this community.

Our students are the seeds - your company is the soil. Plant us in Rhode Island!!

Please contact me to help our efforts:
sara dot n dot streeter at juno dot com